Watered With Blood
by dangerousdame
Summary: Dracula retold as a southern gothic.


My darling Mina,

I can only pray this reaches your hands before I am dead. You know I am not one for melodrama, nor for delusions. Remember that as you read my letter, and know that if I had any other choice I would spare you my story. If I could walk away and return to you keeping what has happened in my head, letting it haunt my dreams and never saying a word to you of it, I would- I could never be so cruel as to share my horror. But I am desperate, and if the man I bribed to take this letter sends it to you, I know you will believe me.

There must still be some documents recording my affairs here in Louisiana. Find them, and therein my location. Take our money and come after me, but do not come alone. Find my friends from the war, or hire gunmen if you must, but come after me. If I have not escaped by then I will surely be dead. What I must ask of you then is to take to the plantation by daylight- it must be by daylight- and burn the mansion down. Let no one escape from it alive. I assure you, no one remaining here is.

I was lured to New Orleans by a client, and I am now his captive. Oh my sweet Mina, even if I escape I know I will never be free of the scent of magnolias that hangs about this hideous mansion like a cloud. The flowers run wild, to cover the stench of death. If their noxious perfume had not filled the air, I would have smelled the decay of his skin when he welcomed me in, and I would have run back home and never turned back.

They call him a Count, but his accent is not the French-tinged lilt of New Orleans. I cannot place it, but his home cannot be anywhere but Hell. Though I fought in the war, you know I came here with no prejudices, and certainly with no superstitions. I only live to write this letter because of a crucifix pressed into my hand by a strange woman. She told me that her "colleagues" who had been called into Dracula's home had not returned, and would not release me until I swore to wear a holy symbol about my neck. I thought she had lost her wits, but when he came at me with his mouth full of teeth sharp as a dog's, it was that bit of tin which stopped him!

He is dead. How he mimics life I do not know, only that it is false. He is like the plantation itself, which seemed so lovely to me when I first arrived. It was only once inside that I saw it was near to crumbling, and that my host lived in a home ruined by fire and age. I have seen no live animals since my arrival, only rotting husks. I have even started to doubt the flowers whose aroma sicken me, wondering if they are not phantoms watered with blood.

I must collect my thoughts, or this letter shall be nothing but the ramblings of a madman. How can one rationally describe being set upon by a being that is not man, not beast, but something depraved and foul beyond human imagination? He sought to devour me as I slept, as he has done to heaven knows how many others. It may be that my suggestion as to what the flowers feed on was not far off; perhaps all the lands he owns are fertilized by the unlucky. A tin crucifix given to me by a whore was my salvation, but how long can I survive being locked up in here?

He is not the only one who wants me to die. There is a trio of female vultures who gawk at my weakened body, waiting for my struggles to cease. I do not know who they are, save that they obey him and share his aquiline features. Wives, sisters, daughters? All three, I wonder in my nightmares? They are unlike him in their speech, and sound for all the world as if they were high society women of this land in days long gone. At nighttime I am never far from their voices, as they wonder when I will grow too weak from hunger to hold onto the crucifix, and discuss portions of my flesh as though they were cuts of meat. They speculate that by the time they are allowed to feast, I will be too thin to be worth the wait.

The only others I have seen since arrival are those who keep camp outside the mansion, and they do their best not to be seen. Slaves, perhaps, or those over whom he has some other powerful hold. None tried to stop a townswoman who came to scream at the windows over a missing child. Neither did they move to help her when Dracula emerged at last to- but here I start to wonder how much of what I have seen are dreams. Still, it is one of their number who agreed to take this in exchange for my watch, and if you read this, it means that he was true to his words.

Mina, my sweetest Mina, love and companion of my life. I beg you to save my soul, if not my body. If I die, destroy what is left of me along with this accursed plantation. If you do not, I fear I will become as Dracula and his women are, a hungry ghost tied to a hateful patch of earth. Perhaps I have done something to deserve my living sorrows, for we all emerged from the war of the rebellion with blood on our hands. If so, let me have paid my debt in life and find peace in death.

Believe my story or believe me mad, but find me. It is the only way I may be saved.

Your loving husband,  
Jonathan


End file.
